


Store Bought Is Fine

by calico_fiction



Series: 3 Times Taako Cooked His Feelings +1 Time He Ate Them [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Candlenights, Canon Compliant, Cooking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Food, Friendship, Gen, Holidays, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Memory Loss, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, holiday fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 05:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19288966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calico_fiction/pseuds/calico_fiction
Summary: Taako stands in front of a display of seasonal berries, the elderberries right up front.





	Store Bought Is Fine

**Author's Note:**

> *Griffin voice* This is a thousand words of Taako having a panic attack on the moon.

Routinely, Taako avoids the produce section of the Fantasy Costco. It's not difficult, the section is small in comparison to the endless others, and usually he's here with Magnus and Merle and they're either equipping for a mission or simply making a nuisance of themselves. But sometimes when Taako can't sleep - which is often - he comes here and shops until he's ready to drop. Most of the time he doesn't even buy anything, he just looks and imagines a thousand different lives for himself based on the items that grab his interest.

Every now and then though, like now, he'll find himself in the dread produce section and he'll see something in particular, some completely mundane ingredient, and he won't be able to leave. Once, he saw a long row of gigantic frozen turkeys and inexplicably burst into tears; once, a pile of innocent avocados captured him in a spiral of dead-end confusion for hours. Now, Taako stands in front of a display of seasonal berries, the elderberries right up front. At least this time he knows what his ish is.

(The Glamour Springs show was in early summer and elderberries wouldn't be naturally ripe for several months still. Taako made them extra dark and juicy, even better than any you could've picked yourself. That was the trick. The impossibility.)

Taako doesn't know how long it is that he stares at the berries, mentally redoing the mechanics of his spell over and over again, and in between every calculation and every pronunciation echo the results. Five dry twigs to one live berry, forty people dead. Short vowels and long consonants, forty people dead.

"Those are fresh, just in!" Garfield pops up behind Taako. Taako doesn't jump, and his thoughts don't stop cycling either. "They're to die for!"

"I can't argue with that, my man," Taako says. Forty people dead. "How much?"

Taako buys every berry. He takes them all back to their suite and piles them on the counter in the kitchen. (It's not a kitchenette; it's a kitchen. Seems strange for a dorm, but Taako has learned not to question things. He can never find the answers anyway, so what's the point.) He just stares at them there too, again for an unknown period of time, until light starts to bleed through the rug they threw over the floor window. He reaches out in the dimness and takes one berry, eats it. The flavor bursts across his tongue; dry and tangy, they go well with other heavy tastes, make great wine, deepen the flavor of desserts. (Bittersweet; just bitter enough that you might not notice right away if the berry you ate was maybe not quite as sweet as you expected.)

Taako doesn't exactly decide to make macarons with the berries. It's just that macarons are difficult and you have to do them just right or they don't come out. He makes one batter, throws that out and makes another, throws that out and tries again. He's single-minded, smothered in a heavy blanket of perfectionism and self-recrimination for even the littlest mistakes that wouldn't really make that much of a difference. His eyes are watering and leaking down his cheeks, but he only notices when his vision is too blurry to read the increments on the measuring tools he's using (no magic, no showmanship, no guesswork, no shortcuts, no trusting himself to just do it right). He wipes his face mechanically, dumps out the ingredients, rinses, and measures again from scratch.

By the time Taako has finally made a batter that he's satisfied with, more than half of the entire Fantasy Costco stock of elderberries that he'd impulsively bought are gone and it's fully light in the dorm. Day and night are a little crooked, on the moon, so it's still technically within regular sleeping hours but there's a non-zero risk that Magnus or Merle might wake up soon. Taako starts piping the batter onto the mold, balancing precariously between the sense of urgency and the need to be careful. His face is wet again, but all the measuring is done for now so as long as he doesn't drip and ruin the cookies it doesn't matter.

Taako isn't quite fast enough, and he can hear movement in Merle's room when he's only piped a little over half of the batter onto molds (that this dorm kitchen came readily equipped with multiple candy molds is just another thing that Taako doesn't question). He looks up when Merle comes in through the doorway, frozen like he's been caught doing something wrong.

"Hey, kiddo," Merle says, groggy and still half asleep but cheerful enough (Taako can't remember Merle ever calling him that before but it doesn't feel unfamiliar). "What's for br-" 

Merle cuts off abruptly when he sees the way Taako is looking at him, or maybe just when he sees the way Taako looks. He pauses for a long moment, and then he lifts his hand and Taako is struck with the unassailable and all-consuming surety (terror) that he's about to Cast and so Taako blurts out, "This is a no-magic zone!"

It's a shriek, definitely, both the volume and pitch beyond all control. Taako is positively melting with embarrassment, chased with the chills of dread. He's as tense as if he had just been electrified, and he can't move enough to look but he can feel cool batter all over his piping hand from squeezing suddenly and too hard.

"Well," Merle says, incongruously calm. "Fuck." And he leaves.

It's a relief that he's gone, that no one is here again, but at the same time Taako wants to follow him. The longing for it is so strong that it hurts, even though Taako can't begin to imagine what he wants so badly. It doesn't matter anyway. He can't let the batter dry, it'll get a film and bake unevenly. So Taako wipes away the mess he made, every last smear of out of place batter, and keeps piping.

Taako sits on the floor in front of the oven after he puts the cookies in. He's sitting a little too close, can feel the heat on the tip of his nose and in his unblinking eyes, but he can see it as the batter starts to release tiny little air bubbles so he keeps watching from right where he is. Merle comes back in while Taako is on the floor. Taako only looks at him out of one eye this time, keeping the other on the baking. Merle is dressed and he has his bible and a blanket. He sits down next to Taako, throws the blanket around them both, and then reaches up to put a hand on the back of Taako's neck.

Instantly, Taako's muscles unwind and he feels sleepy. He finally notices how fast his heart was going when it slows. He wipes his face again, pushes his hair back, licks some leftover batter off of his thumb.

"You cast Calm Emotions on me, old man?" he asks dully.

"You were having a panic attack," Merle answers, gentle but matter-of-fact.

"Fuck you," Taako sneers. He'd like to say he'd had it handled and he'd rather if Merle had just left him alone and pretended he'd never seen, but he knows that isn't true and he hates it.

"Cookies smell good," Merle says after a pause instead of responding to Taako's bad grace.

"Of course they do, I made them," Taako brags automatically. And then, "You can't have any."

"Okay," Merle agrees easily. Taako can't decide if it would be better or worse if he whined, but the spell doesn't let him obsess on it.

Merle stays with Taako while the cookies bake, and cool, and while Taako makes icing with the rest of the berries, and while he pipes it and stands each and every completed cookie up on its side to check if it's perfect. Taako doesn't eat any, and neither does Merle, but he does make Taako eat a banana and go to bed.

The spell has worn off by then, but Taako is exhausted and Merle's company was nice (not that he'd ever say so), so he manages to lay down in the dark and close his eyes and fall asleep. He dreams about cooking, and it's only a little bit of a nightmare.

**Author's Note:**

> Come chill with me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/penlex)!


End file.
